This is Census Week in Nigeria. And this is a preliminary comment. News reports are very disheartening. Shortage of materials and inadequate logistics. Protests and violent riots by unpaid and under-paid enumerators. Political rent-seeking and nepotism. Insufficient hands. Abscondment by fraudulent workers after collecting their allowances. To think that there was a trial-run just a few months ago, which was so high-soundingly hailed by those in charge, this is a monumental climb-down! We must worry.

Thankfully, the president has ordered a 2-day extension in response to the barrage of complaints and threats from all over the land. My assessment is that we actually need another week, with localised work-free days, supervised by governors and council chairmen. We'll see.

Somehow the problem must be systemic. Right in Abuja, the seat of federal might and power - with its limited spatial demography - the complaints were outpouring right from Day 1. And it was on global television! I shudder.

But we must ask: Are we such a country of compulsive complainants or a conglomeration of congenital incompetents? This be a subject for another day. For the census, pray silence, we had enough pseudo-census data/exercises to learn/draw from. Voters Registration. The National Identity Card Project. National Programme on Immunisation. School Enrollment /Exams Data. Etc. etc. So, dear country, why this millennium miasma?

Then, we must ponder: What do we say to the Donor Community which generously helped fund this exercise? Never mind today's taxpayer, but how shall we tell the troubling tale to our children and their children - with its apparently convoluted twists and turns? What is all this thing about federal officials, state funtionaries and local government operatives, all confusing and confronting themselves in an exercise which should be thoroughly LGA-based? Our legendary duplication disease?

And, finally, INEC: If the Population Commission with all it had in time and resources could be this hampered, what happens to the Electoral Commission? And 2007???

Hey, Nigeria, we must make this census a success. Too much at stake. Including the natural seething of those who grudge the deletion of "ethnicity and religion" from the head-count data! Too much at stake. May God bless NIGERIA.